Have you ever been stuck in a pattern of destructive behavior? Without the hope and promise of life in Jesus, the knowledge of our condition can drive us into deeper levels of shame and dysfunction. That was my experience.

A friend called me today from the town where he now lives. “Hey, I was thinking of you and decided to call. How are you?”

As it turns out, I had thought of him two days ago and intended to make the same call. But I was busy and forgot—until today. Kinda funny, right? Except this has been a pattern between me and this friend.

“Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is truly reliable?” Proverbs 20:6 (NLT)

I like perfection—a perfectly organized garage, a perfectly formatted report, perfect routines. For some reason, God wired me to have an internal desire and appreciation for completeness.

In mathematics, there is a number considered divine: φ ≈ 1.61803399. Looks perfect, doesn’t it? Well maybe not. Its beauty is not so much in the digits themselves, but in its applications. Known as the golden ratio, it shows up in many places in nature. The animation below demonstrates various distances in the human hand whose relative sizes match the golden ratio.